ABSTRACT
Background The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that roughly 22,000 species worldwide are threatened with extinction (IUCN 2014). This number is predicted to increase due to the impacts of human activities (Sala et al. 2000), but also as more species are described and have their extinction risk assessed. As a consequence of the extinction of species, intergovernmental policies and agreements have been developed to conserve biological diversity, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which has three main objectives: (1) conservation of biological diversity; (2) sustainable use of the components of biological diversity; and (3) fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources (Convention on Biological Diversity 2003).
